Theses on the Attitude of the Swiss Social-Democratic Party Towards the War[1]

Written: Written in German in early December 1916
Published:
First published in 1931 in Lenin Miscellany XVII.
Translated from the German.
Published according to the manuscript.
Source:Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1964,
Moscow,
Volume 23,
pages 149-151.
Translated: M. S. Levin, The Late Joe Fineberg and and Others
Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
2002
(2005).
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
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1. The present world war is an imperialist war waged for
the political and economic exploitation of the world, for markets, raw
material sources and new spheres of capital investment, oppression of weak
nations, etc.

The “defence of the fatherland” phraseology of the two warring
coalitions is no more than a bourgeois deception of the peoples.

2. The Swiss Government is the steward of the Swiss bourgeoisie, which
is wholly dependent upon international finance capital and intimately
associated with the imperialist bourgeoisie of the Great Powers.

It is therefore no accident, but an inevitable result of these economic
facts, that the Swiss Government is from day to day—and this has been so
for decades—conducting an increasingly reactionary policy and secret
diplomacy, hampering and violating the people’s democratic rights and
freedoms, kow-towing to the military clique and systematically and
shamelessly sacrificing the interests of the broad masses to the interests
of a handful of financial magnates.

Switzerland may at any moment be drawn into the present war as a result
of this dependence of her bourgeois government on the interests of the
financial oligarchy, and of powerful pressure by one or another of the
imperialist coalitions.

3. Consequently, in relation to Switzerland, too, “defence of the
fatherland” is now no more than a hypocritical phrase. For in reality it
is not a question of defending democracy, independence or the interests of
the broad popular masses,
etc., but, on the contrary, of preparing to hurl the workers and small
peasants into the holocaust in order to maintain the monopoly and
privileges of the bourgeoisie, of strengthening capitalist domination and
political reaction.

4. Proceeding from these facts, the Swiss Social-Democratic Party
rejects “defence of the fatherland” on principle, demands immediate
demobilisation and calls on the working class to reply to the bourgeoisie’s
war preparations and to war itself, should it break out, with the sharpest
methods of proletarian class struggle.

(a) Rejection of civil peace, sharper principled struggle against all
bourgeois parties, and also against the Grütli Verein as an organisation
of agents of the bourgeoisie within the workers’ movement, and against
Grütli trends within the Socialist Party.

(b) Rejection of all war credits, no matter under what pretext
requested, both in peace-time and war-time.

(c) Support of all revolutionary movements and every struggle of the
working class of the belligerent countries against the war and against
their own governments.

(d) Assistance to the revolutionary mass struggle within
Switzerland—strikes, demonstrations, armed rising against the
bourgeoisie.

(e) Systematic propaganda among the armed forces, establishment for
this purpose of special Social-Democratic groups in the army and among
conscription-age youth.

(f) Establishment by the working class of illegal organisations in
retaliation to every government curtailment or repeal of political
freedoms.

(g) Systematic preparation, through regular and consistent explanatory
work among the workers, of a situation in which the leadership of all
workers’ and office employees’ organisations without exception would pass
into the hands of persons who accept and are capable of conducting this
struggle against the war.

5. The Party’s aim in the revolutionary mass struggle, adopted at the
1915 Party Congress in Aarau, is a socialist revolution in
Switzerland. Economically, this can be carried out immediately. Socialist
revolution offers the only
effective means of liberating the masses from the horror of high prices and
hunger. It is being brought nearer as a result of the crisis that has
gripped the whole of Europe. It is absolutely necessary for the complete
elimination of militarism and war.

The Party declares that all bourgeois pacifist and socialist pacifist
phrases against militarism and war that fail to accept this goal and the
revolutionary means of achieving it, are illusions or lies and can only
have the effect of diverting the working class from any serious struggle
against the foundations of capitalism.

Without ceasing its fight to improve the position of the wage-slaves,
the Party calls upon the working class and its representatives to put on
the order of the day propaganda for an immediate socialist revolution in
Switzerland. This should be done through mass agitation, speeches in
Parliament, legislative proposals, etc., proving the need to replace the
bourgeois government by a proletarian government relying on the support of
the mass of the propertyless population, and explaining the imperative need
for such measures as expropriation of the banks and big industries, repeal
of all indirect taxes, introduction of a single direct tax with
revolutionary-high tax-rates for big incomes, etc.

Notes

[1]These theses and several other items in this volume (“Principles Involved
in the War Issue”; “An Open Letter to Charles Name”; “Twelve Brief
Theses on H. Greulich’s Defence of Fatherland Defence”; “Imaginary or
Real Marsh?”; “Proposed Amendments to the Resolution on the War Issue”;
“The Story of One Short Period in the Life of One Socialist Party”) were
written in connection with the discussion of the war issue in the Swiss
Social-Democratic Party.

In August 1916 the party Executive decided to call an emergency
congress for February 11–12, 1917 to discuss the war issue. The Zurich
Congress (November 4–5, 1916) endorsed that decision and am pointed a
commission to draw up draft resolutions for the emergency congress.

The commission framed two drafts: the majority draft, based on Grimm’s
Centrist theses, published in July 1916, and the minority social-chauvinist
draft which called on Social-Democrats to “defend the fatherland” in the
event of Switzerland entering the war.

Lenin, who was closely associated with the Swiss Left, was well
informed of the commission’s activities. His “Theses on the Attitude of
the Swiss Social-Democratic Party Towards the War” were written to help
the Swiss Left. Lenin drew up several variants and drafts, devoting special
attention to practical proposals, before working out the final text.